Assessing Group-formation Strategies’ Impact Student Performance? A comparative multi-semester statistical analysis

The study period covered 4 semesters from Fall 2022 and Fall 2024. Eleven sections of undergraduate Business Analytics course are studied for investigation. Two modalities were included on-ground and online-asynchronous as they are the regular options for students at our institution. The course contents were the same. The projects were exploratory where student teams were provided a dataset with research questions, they were asked to prepare a recorded group presentation to answer the questions with data-driven approaches (data visualization, statistical analysis, modeling, etc.). The project length was 12 weeks in 16-week on ground sections, whereas it was kept 6 weeks in 8-week online-asynchronous section. They were all the same undergraduate course, Business Analytics I either offered on ground or online asynchronous. Seven sections had team-based learning (TBL), where a specific TBL was implemented e.g. service-learning project (SLP), exploratory project (EP), work-based learning (WBL). Group formation methods included team-player survey (TBS), self-assigned groups, and random group formation. Four sections were used as a control group. Moreover, table 3 depicts the variables included in the data collection process (see Table 4). Most of these variables are used to answer the RQ 3, while some of the variables are used to conduct tests for RQ1 and RQ2.

ID Variable Name Variable explanation and its range, features, etc.
1 CourseModality On-ground, Online-Async
2 SemesterLength 16, 8 weeks
3 TBL Length 12, 6 weeks
4 Participation Participation level on Canvas (Low, Medium, High)
5 Page Views Page views on Canvas (Low, Medium, High)
6 MissingNum # of missing assignments
7 LateNum # of late assignments
8 TP_Type Team player type (Contributor, Collaborator, Communicator, and Challenger)
9 TPS Highest team player tyle score out of 4 types (0-1)
10 StudentComm Number of messages student sent to instructor
11 InstructorComm Number of messages instructor sent to students
12 TPGroupPerf Term project grade (0,1)
13 TPIndPerf Term project reflection HW grade (0,1)
14 ExamPerf Exam performance (0,1)
15 QuizPerf Quiz performance (0,1)
16 HWPerf HW performance (0,1)
17 OverallPerf Course grade (0,1)